Quote:
Originally Posted by Chazley
I love how all this discussion always comes up about how poker is dying, and how sites HAVE to switch to recreational models... however people seem to ignore WPN and the growth they've shown over the past couple years. They cater almost exclusively to grinders, and in some cases even more than what Stars ever did. In fact, I think they do it TOO much. For example, I feel like tables should not be listed in lobby as currently constructed - instead, list only the stakes and number of players currently playing at those stakes to completely eliminate bumhunting. The Beast is also one of the worst ideas I've ever seen for a poker site. WPN's support is below-average. Pre-black friday Pokerstars support was the gold standard. It made regs and fish alike all feel comfortable, on top of everyone getting top notch service. If sites focused on providing great support, that would be a great step as well. It also helps to be serving USA customers.
It is my opinion that regulars aren't the problem with poker sites. It's the greedy companies that own poker sites (coughamayacough) that seek short term profits instead of building a poker site from the ground up the right way. NO ONE has tried to copy the pre-black Friday Pokerstars strategy of, spend a majority of your money advertising to new players and let the regulars keep tables running while subsidizing them with big rewards, while providing excellent software and support. Is this entirely possible in the current climate? No. Players are too good now. But if you balance those ideas with things like eliminating seating scripts, spreading out rewards more to lower level grinders instead of only high-volume players, and reducing rake to make all games profitable for a decent percentage of people, I personally feel those are great steps to take for any poker site. Instead, Bovada walked into a gold mine with every trusted US-facing site leaving the market after black friday, and then sites like Merge and Lock shooting themselves in the foot with horrible management and massive cashout issues. Bovada gave out zero rewards and had anonymous tables with a 4 table limit for cash games, and every poker site jumped at the opportunity to throw all the blame to the high-volume regs who supposedly made the ecosystem unsustainable, completely ignoring the fact Bovada just got blessed by a bunch of sites just falling face first before them and zero other competitors other than themselves being there to fill in the void.
Could say more but I'll end it there
The thing about Bovada is that a random fish at least has a shot to win in the short term because of lack of huds and other weak players, which is what causes the game to grow, or rather die more slowly. What's good about the anonymous, table-capped model is that it lowers the element of skill relative to luck while still retaining enough skill to make the game beatable, which as Mason Malmuth would point out, is what makes a gambling game sustainable and vibrant. What do you think the chances are that a random fish who has played poker only a few times with friends could win at even 25nl on a site with huds and 12 tabling eastern europeans over a 1k hand sample? I would guess that it's probably lower than 5%. Such a player is definitely -ev on bovada by a lot, but he at least has a legit chance of winning in the short term there.